Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-206). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-148).

Thesis project (D. Min.)--Denver Seminary, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 243-268).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of West Florida, 2007. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 135 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) encompasses a group of life-long neurodevelopmental disorders. It is an enormous challenge to care for someone with ASD. The majority of people with ASD will need life-long support from family members and will not be able to function independently in society. This places emotional and financial strain on a family. There are many low-income families in South Africa with autistic children who cannot afford specialised intervention. It has been estimated that 135 000 autistic children are not getting the specialized education they need. Despite not receiving the needed support, there are many low-income families who remain resilient after their child is diagnosed. This study aimed to explore how these low-income families remain resilient. Qualitative data was gathered using in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in English and Afrikaans; depending on the participant’s language of preference. Six participants were recruited with the help of professionals in a local community in Cape Town, Western Cape. The data obtained was transcribed and analysed through thematic analysis. Lincoln and Guba’s model (Krefting, 1990) was used to determine the trustworthiness of the data. The three themes that emerged from the study were (1) parents’ response to the diagnosis of their child, (2) the resources parents found helpful in their immediate environment and (3) the specific coping skills that parents use to remain resilient. Walsh’s family resilience framework as well as the Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment and Adaptation (The Resiliency Model) of McCubbin and McCubbin were used to understand how participants adjusted to their circumstance and remained resilient. This study provides a more in-depth understanding of the resilience factors of families with a child with ASD in a resource-limited setting in the Western Cape.

Developing effective literacy skill has become an increasingly critical skill in today's information age. Students with emotional/behavioral disorders (E/BD) routinely lack these skills and are not being taught how to read effectively. The field of special education needs more comprehensive and specific information about how to most effectively teach reading skills to students with E/BD. When reading interventions are conducted using student with E/BD, the interventions are generally drawn from the LD field. The assumption is that the reading interventions that have worked with students with LD will work equally well with the E/BD population. This study performed a meta-analysis to examine whether reading interventions are equally effective on the E/BD and LD populations. In addition, it will examine whether the instruction mode (e. g., peer, self, or teacher directed), gender, or grade group affects the success of the intervention. The meta-analysis found that the reading interventions for both disability groups had high effect sizes. In addition, neither disability group, teaching method, gender, nor grades were predictive of the variance in the effect size. These results indicate that reading programs that have been designed for students with LD are also effective for students with E/BD and furthermore, reading programs can improve the academic achievement of students with behavioral disorders. Recommendations for teacher training and future research are given based on these results.

The teacher of the emotionally disturbed student must provide an educational setting for pupils unable, or unwilling, to appropriately interact within the regular educational setting. The teacher, ultimately, decides classroom scheduling, academic experiences, social interactions and order of the room. In short, teaching style and the teaching personality shape the learning environment. Style of teaching is evidenced by the management techniques utilized within the classroom. The purpose of this study is to determine if differences exist in the classroom management techniques employed by educators of emotionally disturbed children and youth assigned to (a) resource rooms in the public school setting, (b) self-contained classrooms in the public school setting, and (c) residential treatment centers as determined by the Classroom Management Profile (Bullock & Zagar, 1980).

The geographical focus of this study is on that section of Southeast Portland which has been designated by the Office of Econom1c Opportunity as a poverty pocket because of an incidence of low-income families exceeding ~. (See Figure 2, Appendix A.) As such, the area is under the jurisdiction of the Portland Metropolitan Steering Committee, the OEO community action agency for Portland. Under the auspices of this agency, the four neighborhoods in the area (Brooklyn, Buckman, Richmond and Sunnyside) in 1966 formed a separate non-profit delegate agency which was named Portland Action Committees Together, Incorporated (PACT). PACT originally was responsible for administering War on Poverty programs through three neighborhood centers in the area. Its functions have changed but it still remains very much involved, even providing the terms by which the area is known: the PACT target area. The particular focus of the study has to do with the mental health of elementary School age children in the PACT target area. The original, and still primary, purpose of this study was to provide a statistical data base for a grant proposal to fund a children's mental health service agency in the PACT target area of Southeast Portland. Since the original conception by Jack Tovey of the Child Psychiatry Department, University of Oregon Medical School, and PACT staff, the plan has been subsumed under the planning auspices of the Comprehensive Mental Health Planning Committee, a group whose aim is to work toward expanding and consolidating mental health services in all dimensions for the Southeast Portland area.

A study was conducted to determine if the program of perceptual-motor training outlined by D.H. Radler and Newell C. Kephart in their book, Success Through Play, would increase the perceptual-motor skills of emotionally disturbed children as measured by the Purdue Perceptual Motor Survey. Twenty children from the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area whose ages ranged from six to twelve years were included in the program. These children were grouped according to their diagnosis of withdrawn or acting-out which was received by the agency upon their referral. Three agencies participated in the study. Each child was administered the Purdue Perceptual Motor Survey before any treatment was begun and their scores were recorded on a summary sheet for comparison with the scores which they would obtain when they were retested after the experiment was completed. Then for the next nine weeks, three days a week and one half hour a day, the subjects in the experimental group received the training outlined in Success Through Play and the subjects in the control group received quiet or physical activity for an equal amount of time. At the end of nine weeks, each child was again administered the Purdue Perceptual Motor Survey and the score was recorded. The correlation of these pre- and post-test scores showed that the subjects in the experimental acting-out group improved their perceptual-motor skills significantly more than the control acting-out group; and the experimental withdrawn group improved their perceptual-motor skills significantly more than the control withdrawn group.

This study began with the authors' interest in the Portland Public Schools' program for Emotionally Handicapped children. Originally, the researchers were interested in assessing behavioral characteristics and changes among children in that program and in relating these variables to the kind and extent of parental involvement. Such a study was particularly timely, it was felt, since some schools were considering eliminating the parent involvement component of the program and there was discussion of phasing out the entire program as it then existed in favor of "mainstreaming." The researchers soon discovered the paucity of research information relating to program effects on children after their termination and realized that program changes might well happen for political and subjective reasons in the absence of research data. Unfortunately, recent changes in Oregon Law relating to confidentiality, in addition to administrative arid funding difficulties in the schools forced an upper level decision to curtail outside research in the school system. In September of 1976 the authors were left with an interest and a partially formulated research design but no program within which to apply their design. At this point the researchers contacted the Childrens' Psychiatric Day Treatment Center in Portland (C.P.D.T.C.) and presented a preliminary plan for research to that agency's Administrative Committee. They received the agency's approval to pursue research relating to children who had been in that program and were able to begin the present study. in early October. The present study undertakes to measure behavior changes among the forty-one children who had left the Center during the previous two years and to relate the stability of these changes to subsequent events in the childrens' home lives and to the degree of their parents' involvement in their treatment.